1 Mark incoming mail with the “blue star” (Gmail) to separate from rest of the noise – this is your Real Mail Inbox. Also this way you could see which mails are “new” (unreviewed) even if they are readed.
Blue stars won’t bug you – they are not yellow - so won’t meld with rest of mail, and not red - so not very urgent, and not green - so not very relaxing…
2 Now you need to do your work. I mean – do you already have something in your GTD? Even if you don’t do GTD… This could autoresolve a number of potential issues with mail. Cause all people do errors and I hope that most of your “blue star” mail senders are people.
But do they really people?.. Still you must give the Universe some time to clean things up…
3 Tired doing work? Return to the mail. Read it, do quick replies, create tracker issues with backlinks to mail or Simpletask inbox entries – preferably “in bulk” to avoid thinking about a single thing too much. And only after that remove the “blue stars”.
4 And now you need to do your work again – which all is in your GTD (or anywhere else), but you can forget about mail for now.
Just one thing at the time…
5 Tired of work again? A quick trip to the mail!
Scatter some blue stars!..